reflections on the people and tech that attempt to achieve continuous delivery

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a fly on the wall view of some key problems with delivering software and databases

Most blogs about software delivery are written by software developers or 'DevOps' types. This is logical, but sometimes it helps to take a step back. This blog is from the perspective of someone who is not a developer, but who works with many of them at a variety of organisations. From this perspective some patterns jump out, even to the untrained eye. Sometimes the solutions are obvious, if only it was possible to look at them from a different angle.

Redgate has a DevOps team. They do a good job. For the record, Redgate is not the company that inspired this blog post. The company that did shall remain nameless. I don’t have a problem with “DevOps teams” or “DevOps engineers”… as long as they are evangelists – and not button pushers, build masters or release engineers with added buzzwords.…

The following is likely to have typos, mistakes and poor writing. I’m liveblogging from the Jenkins User Conference in London. Quick links: DevOps and why 50 Production Deploys Per Day is Essential: Martin Croker @martincroker and Markus Rendall @markusrendall Conversation with Kohsuke Kawaguchi, creator of Jenkins, about continuous delivery for databases From virtual machines to containers: Achieving Continuous Integration, Build…

tl;dr Some argue that thinking about databases purely in terms of migrations provides repeatability and reliable deployments. Others argue that working declaratively, treating the database state as code, is a better development experience providing immutability, reliable testing and greater productivity. Most people have a strong opinion – not enough people discuss the relative pros and cons in a balanced way.…

Next week I’m going back to NDC Oslo. It was a great experience last year and it inspired a couple of blog posts. Two things I learned at NDC Oslo 2014 Woodland creature story sizing in practice So I’m going back, and this time I’m delivering two sessions The first is one I’ve given a few times before but, based…

A few months back I wrote about how I had been tricked by copycat website “British Passport Services” (BPS). I wrote about how they had been threatening to take me to court and how I was just one of many people who were currently being harassed by them regarding unfair demands for payment. It is reported that the website owner,…

How should you source control database users? This topic came up a couple of times in the last week. Once at the inaugural Redgate database source control training day on Wednesday and once or twice at SQL Saturday Exeter, when somewhere in between the foot jenga, pirate hats and explosive Phil Factor unmasking (if you believe it?) I found some…

When devising the first workshop for the new Redgate training program, Steve Jones (b|t) and I got into a bit of a debate about branching. Upon reflection, it’s obvious why. People often use the term ‘release branch’ – but they can mean different things. It is important to be clear. I did some Googling and I couldn’t find consistent terminology…

Sorry I’ve not posted for a while. Much travel for work. Behind on study. Being sued by a scam website. You know – the usual. But I read a thing – and I laughed – and I got fired up – and now I want to write a thing. Thank you to the Scary DBA (b|t) and the DevOps DBA…

UPDATE: Since I first posted this I have had my day in court and I won! Details here: My glorious day in court with “Passport Profiteer” Richard Howard from copycat website British Passport Services. *** I apologise in advance. This one might get a bit rant-y. I consider myself pretty tech savvy… I configure software for a living. I built this…